Surbiton High Girls’ Prep have been busy celebrating International Week and the different languages spoken within our school community. The week began with Treehouse Storytime as different stories and poems were read by the girls each day during breaktime. Across the week, the languages heard included French, Arabic, Finnish, Japanese, Punjabi, Chinese, Slovak and Spanish to name but a few!
Before School, KS2 enjoyed a global taster breakfast with a variety of dishes from European countries. Girls were asked to match up each food with the country of origin and think about the correct names for each dish.
During lessons, Year 4 were part of an escape room challenge and needed to apply their language detective skills in order to unlock the codes for each room. Year 3 learned greetings from around the world and Year 5s research on South American countries culminated with detailed and informative presentations. In Year 1, girls focused on their listening skills to identify the languages heard in a song and girls in Year 2 learned colours in Spanish.
The week finished with International Day and an MFL Assembly. Year 6 shared the results of their questionnaire to find out the different languages spoken within School as well as other languages that both the girls and staff would like to learn in the future. The girls felt proud to be part of such a diverse community. During the assembly, girls shared their first-hand experiences of the trials and tribulations of learning another language as well as their honest thoughts on why it is important to be proud and promote our linguistic diversity. The girls drew many parallels between learning another language and our school values and surmised that language learning also requires some courage to just give it a go!
For International Day on Friday, many girls wore colourful outfits representing flags from around the world or traditional clothing from a country of family heritage ensuing the School was awash with colour.
